About Us
The Team
As a team, we are incredibly versatile. We all share the passion for working with startups, for two of us that extend into being investors in startups like Peakon and Deeds Capital, and for another, it was founding an NGO in Cambodia.
With backgrounds in psychology and management, law, and an MBA in marketing with 12 years of agency experience. We have skill sets usually found in high-end executive recruitment companies, and we combine those skill sets with an exceptional understanding of startups, scaleups, and transformational teams. We know the complex startup environment and how we can help them build the perfect outfit, founding teams, or open up in a new market.
No one knows and loves startups like us. We have been working with startups and scaleups like Peakon, Simple Feast, Omnio, Nøie, Tradeshift, Citrix (globally), Falcon Social, Trustpilot, Nykredit, Tripadvisor, Rainmaking, Leadfamly, Chainalysis, Bolighed, Lix, HG Insights, Unwire, Podio, Driversnote and many more on all levels. That’s why we are known as “The Startup Recruiter.”
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Bjørn Andersen
Founder
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I have been working in recruitment for a looong time. I started when recruitment was much more corporate and a generic structure – recruitment agencies were experts in recruitment, but rarely knew anything about specific verticals and culture in hiring, especially in startups…
Later most recruitment agencies became more specialized and focused on hiring particular roles, offering specialist recruiters only hiring .net developers, og java developers, or marketing roles etc.
I’ve tried both and honestly – it just didn’t feel right.
First of all, most jobs can feel very, very different depending on the setting. Is it in a global corporation? Government? Or is it in a startup or a scaleup? Secondly – if a recruiter only focuses on one thing, it’s challenging to comprehend the dynamics of an agile team in a startup. You tend to know a lot about i.e., engineering. Still, you know very little about product management, or sales, or design etc.….
I started Advenio 8 years ago, and I quickly found out that working with startups is unique from anything else – and I also found out that I was curious about how you actually build a startup. Not “just” hiring a developer or a designer – but how to build a kick-ass team, which can put a serious dent in the world.
That’s why Advenio is neither generic nor specialized in one specific role – our specialization is in startups, scaleups, and transformational teams (somewhere between a startup and a corporate entity). We could call it a vertical – but that vertical doesn’t exist as such.
I love working with startups, scaleups, and transformational teams – not only because it is exciting, but because I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the most creative, dynamic and groundbreaking companies around; from building entire teams for companies such as Citrix in DK and US to building sales teams across Europe establishing new markets, founding teams for Rainmaking and being an enabler for startups to achieve their objectives – i.e. building product or closing an A round.
It’s an incredibly versatile environment – sometimes frustrating but mostly awesome, giving me a chance to work with some of the most gifted and successful founders and talents around.
And that is what makes us different – we love startups, and startups (or that is what they say at least) loves us.
We have got tons of stories to share – if you’re interested in learning more about how we can help you reach your next milestone, whether it’s building a product or hitting your sales targets, so you can close your next funding round, we’re always up for a coffee or a call.
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Christian Holst
Recruitment Business Manager
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I have always been interested in the complexity of talent of how human competencies can create value for companies, and how you can build high-performance teams by making the right hires. A passion for all the different ways of interacting with people and recruiting them to the perfect environment was the key factor of why I became interested in talent acquisition, recruitment, and executive search.
My interest in recruitment and building the right teams, started with my bachelor-thesis at Business Administration, Aalborg University, focusing on the right composition of hiring teams, attraction, and talent management of “A-Players”. I realized that it was not only complex but also extremely exciting. In Law School, my thesis focused on the liability and responsibility of corporate executives and board members, which again fueled my interest in the complexity of recruiting and management of the best teams.
During my time with the Danish Parkinson Disease Association, I received a strong understanding of what goes on outside the organization and how it affects talent, by navigating around stakeholders such as politicians, big business leaders from the pharmaceutical companies – to the people with Parkinson Disease and their affiliates.
Later I started to get involved in startups. One of my best friends and talent – Teit Varming (Ex-CFO + Co-founder Bownty) got together with Steffen Frølund (Ex-CEO + Co-founder Bownty) and started to develop an idea centered around an alternative loan to homeowners. I quickly got involved and helped Teit and Steffen in the recruitment and talent to what became Deeds Capital with legal advice amongst other things. The Board includes former Tax minister Carsten Koch, Former Head of Sydbank Anders Thoustrup and former CEO Erik Holst amongst others. I decided to invest in Deeds Capital and the team during my time there. Deeds Capital got approved by Finanstilsynet in 2019.
During my time with Deeds Capital I realized two things:
- That I loved working with startups and recruiting
- That I had a strong interest in connecting and understanding talent and their skill sets.